CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
UCLA’s film, television, and digital media e-journal, Mediascape, is
now accepting submissions for the Features, Reviews, Columns and Meta
sections of its next issue. This journal, a place for articles
pertaining to visual culture, is peer-reviewed and published on an
annual table. The deadline for the next issue is the 1st of January,
2007.
Features: Taking into account the increasingly blurry line between
the many different components of the modern media landscape, the
features section takes an inter-disciplinary and inter-media approach
to scholarly discourse on the three main facets of contemporary
visual culture: film, television and digital media. As such, the
section seeks contributions from all areas within media studies, from
film theory to moving image archiving, and welcomes contributions
from other academic fields, such as history, literature, music,
economics, political science, etc., as well as from media
practitioners outside of academia altogether. The guiding principle
uniting these contributions will be the perspectives, however
disparate, that they offer on the mediascape that is common to all of
us as media scholars, practitioners and consumers.
Submissions for the features section need not address the larger
issues described above, so long as they offer a unique perspective on
film, television, digital media, or any other aspect of moving image
culture, preferably encompassing more than one. Though articles
should be of a high level of scholarly rigor, the journal will not be
read exclusively by media scholars. Writing should therefore be
readable enough to be enjoyed by those outside of the field of media
studies and indeed outside of the academy altogether.
To submit a feature article, please email a short bio and a copy of
your manuscript in Word format to [log in to unmask] For the purposes
of confidentiality during the double blind peer review, please
include both your bio and your personal contact information in the
accompanying email only, rather than in the word document. Feature
submissions should range from between 15 to 25 manuscript pages.
Rarely, exceptions will be made with regard to length in either
direction; however, it is strongly recommended that the author stay
within the 15-25 page range.
Reviews: Mainstream film, television and digital media reviewing
tends to be constrained by an industry model that requires writers to
gain access to the objects of their review through publicity agents,
press kits and press screenings, leading to a homogeneity of
perspectives, and limiting reviews to objects that are newly
available for purchase –in effect reducing these reviews to simple
announcements of the latest releases. This model also limits reviews
to the film/TV/digital media text, which essentially gives industrial
and business factors a free pass. For these reasons, Mediascape’s
reviews section calls for reviews written outside of the industry
model described above, and examining not only film, television and
digital media texts, but also the institutions and apparatuses that
shape the way we as consumers, fans, and academics make meaning of
them, such as festivals, books, award shows, restorations, fan
magazines, conferences, DVDs, press kits, movie theaters, peer-to-
peer technologies, soundtracks, televisions, advertising, reviews,
websites, retailers, or any combination of the above.
The reviews section also seeks to become a forum for the
international exchange of ideas and perspectives, in order to break
from the local or national centrism of conventional review
journalism. However, there is no pretension of possessing a “global”
viewpoint. Instead, contributors should bring to the forum their own
cultural locatedness in hopes of contributing to a larger,
international exchange of ideas. In pursuit of a more complete
comprehension of global film circulation and reception, Mediascape’s
review section is also interested in publishing foreign language
reviews in English and vice versa.
Please direct reviews section questions, proposals, and submissions
to [log in to unmask]
Reviews should be a minimum of 2,500 words, although exceptions may
be granted. There is no maximum word limit, provided work is
readable, structured, and visually appealing in the online format.
Columns: This issue’s columns section is seeking short papers
(800-1500 words) on the dividing and converging nature of the
hardware/software split. This can be on anything from the
relationship between Microsoft and Intel, to the solid state memory
of the Rosetta Stone, to the DVR and the iTV, to the tower of Babel,
to the emergence of cloudware. All perspectives are welcome, as long
as they are current, timeless, and exuberant. Non-traditional New
Media-esque "essays" are also welcome and will be greatly
appreciated. Please submit columns and inquiries to
([log in to unmask]) by January 1, 2007.
Meta: Recent scholarship in media studies acknowledges a change in
the objects of our study with the digital revolution: a convergence
of media at both the formal and industrial organizational levels. As
films are more often screened on television sets—whether through
cable television, VHS, DVD, or On Demand services—than exhibited in
theaters, and as both films and television shows are increasingly
viewed streaming through computer monitors or mobile accessories of
varying sizes and capacities, how do the theoretical tools and terms
of media studies apply or simply fail to apply to these new
exhibition venues and the industrial strategies developed to cater to
them?
While our contemporary object of study may have arguably converged,
the theoretical bodies and borders within our discipline do not yet
seem as porous. Is it necessary to conceive of the study of digital
media forms, despite technologically-specific concerns, as a
trajectory continuing and morphing, rather than breaking, from the
media scholarship that has come before it? How do we integrate,
rather than antagonize, the insights various schools of thought
within cinema, television, and digital media studies individually
bring to the media studies table? Rather than reiterate the call for
new terms and concepts specific to digital media, this edition of the
meta section seeks to challenge scholars to rethink and refurbish
important terms and concepts from “media studies past” to put today’s
mediascape in perspective. Hopefully this will challenge us to think
beyond a model of scholarship built solely on notions of
“progress” (‘that was then, this is now’), and perhaps inspire us to
further converge theories to suit a converged object of study.
Please write a brief position paper (2000-3500 words) responding to
the questions posed above and engaging in the following experiment:
Re-appropriate one term or concept from media studies scholarship
produced prior to 1990. Determine how and if this term or concept is
viable or useful when used to describe digital media. Feel free to
suggest how a rearticulation or retrofitting of the term or concept
would be necessary. Please submit Meta papers to Candace Moore
([log in to unmask]) by January 1, 2007.
General Guidelines:
All submissions should follow MLA Style guidelines and should employ
the parenthetical, in-text method of source citation and comply with
the following formatting requirements:
1.) No cover page, with title instead centered at the top of the
first page of the article
2.) Language of document set to English
3.) Double spaced paragraphs in 12 point font
4.) Margins: top – 1” left – 1” right 1” bottom 1.25” to
accommodate footer
5.) Endnotes rather than footnotes
6.) Images correctly sized outside of word (sizing them in word
slows web editing process) and then placed within the word document’s
layout where they should appear at publication
Because of the peer review and editorial processes of the journal’s
different sections, it may take as long as eight weeks for decisions
on submissions to reach the writers.
General email inquiries can also be sent to [log in to unmask]
Thank you all!
Jonathan Cohn
[log in to unmask]
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